When Difficult Relatives Happen to Good People: Navigating Religious Disagreements in the Family

The holiday season is now fully upon us, and with it comes time spent with family. Seeing the relatives. Some combination of grandparents and parents, uncles and aunts, cousins, brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nephews, nieces, children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. Traveling over there to see them, or them traveling over here.

 

Consider some quotes about family:

 

“The family: that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to” (Dodie Smith).

 

“The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together” (Erma Bombeck).

 

Those are the quotes, and let’s pause for a moment to notice some of the central images: family as “that dear octopus”; family as “a strange little band of characters trudging through life; family “trying to figure out the common thread binding us together.” All such images speak directly to our topic this morning: navigating religious disagreements with our relatives, especially those involving our born-again fundamentalist relatives. How difficult this can be. The stories abound:

 

An aunt whose born-again niece and nephew specifically pray for the welfare of her soul during the dinnertime grace while she is visiting—although the aunt’s soul feels just fine….

 

A brother who, out of the blue, asks, “Are you an evolutionist?” and then goes on a huge diatribe about how evolution is not good science but superstition….

 

A mother who insists on the entire family attending her fundamentalist church’s Christmas Eve service, even though her son and daughter-in-law clearly squirm at what her church teaches….  

 

Any of these remind you of your own stories? It’s the “strange little band of characters trudging through life, trying to figure out the common thread binding us together.” It’s “the dear octopus.”

 

Let’s take a look at the varieties of religious disagreements in families, and then explore options for dealing with them effectively.

 

Starting with this insight: that religious disagreements are sometimes not on-the-level; they mask something deeper. The argument may sound like it is all and only about religion: whether or not the Christian scriptures are the literal word of God; whether or not there is such a thing as eternal hell; whether or not all religions possess some truth. That’s what the argument sounds like, and we can get so focused on that, we miss out on the deeper factors that, in truth, energize and intensify what’s going on: historical factors, social factors, interpersonal factors, psychological factors, and so on. Invisibly fueling the fire—so if we ignore them, solutions at the surface level can only be temporary. The spite will never end. Religion is a multi-layered venture; as we experience religious conflict in our families, we need to be listening for the deeper layers as well.

 

One of these layers we have already heard about, in our reading from earlier. The author, Unitarian Universalist Doug Muder, talked about the anxiety towards social change that underlies the Religious Right’s loyalty to “absolute values,” or the non-negotiable system of roles and obligations they aspire to live within. When we religious liberals call this a valid spiritual choice, just one among others, we relativize what is for them absolute. They feel disrespected and misunderstood. We remind them exactly of what they are fighting against. “Religious conservatives are not being busybodies,” says Doug Muder, “when they worry about moral breakdown: Fundamentalists worry about moral breakdown because they see their own lives, families, and communities breaking down.” That’s what Doug Muder says, and he follows up with a quote from a study of conservative Christian families which says, “Whether the issue is divorce, materialism, sexual promiscuity, racism, physical abuse in marriage, or neglect of a biblical worldview, the polling data point to widespread, blatant disobedience of clear biblical moral demands on the part of people who allegedly are evangelical, born-again Christians. The statistics are devastating.”

 

This is one of the deeper layers that we need to listen for, beneath the surface arguments. Basic compassion requires it. Anxiety about what the world is coming to; fear and confusion about how it is that traditional families are fraying apart. As for a second deeper layer to listen for: it’s something more basic. I’m talking about communication skills. Or, rather, the lack of them. Consider, for example, the bad habit of focusing on intentions and ignoring the impact of words. As when a well-meaning relative insists, “I’m not disrespecting you; I’m trying to save your soul. Can’t you see that?” The words have explicitly religious content, but the real problem is the underlying communication pattern, which we see occurring in non-religious contexts all the time. As in, “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings; I was only trying to say that you’ve gained twenty pounds and your favorite dress no longer fits.” The assumption is that because the intentions were all innocent and good, you should not feel hurt. In fact, now that the intentions have been clarified, all your hurt feelings should instantly disappear. But this is ridiculous. People have a right to feel their feelings, whether one’s religion or one’s body image has just been insulted. You just can’t focus on intentions and dismiss the impact of one’s words. You just can’t have one without the other. HOW one says something is just as important as WHAT one says.

 

Beneath the surface disagreements: layers and layers. Anxiety about social change, poor communication skills; and also this: family dynamics. For example, the sibling rivalry that simmers beneath the relationship between two sisters, which gives their religious disagreement particular intensity since one of the sisters has “fallen away” from the family faith while the other has stayed with it. On the surface, the argument sounds like it’s about religion between two mature adults; but at a deeper level the sisters are just like pre-teens competing for attention from Mom and Dad. A variant of this is the spouse of the sister who has stayed close to home, who champions his wife against his errant sister-in-law even as his wife pretends ignorance and says not a word.

 

It’s family dynamics. And there are so many varieties. The son who uses religion as a means of winning independence from his family; the more obnoxiously he asserts his differences and, as a result, calls the family wrath down upon himself, the more independent he feels. Or this pattern: parents trying to preserve family identity and continuity through time, which they see as inextricably connected to a particular denomination or system of beliefs; and this is what inspires their unceasing and seemingly endless efforts to convert you back into the fold. Or this: the aunt who follows the beat of a different spiritual drummer and takes severe heat from everyone else—but it’s really not so much about her spiritual choices as it is the fact that the family needs a collective punching bag, and the person who stands out too much gets to be the scapegoat.

 

All is not necessarily as it seems. Appearance can hide reality. Arguments about religion can serve to express deeper tensions even as they conceal what’s really going on. For this reason, in the face of family disagreements, it can be so helpful to take a curiosity stance towards what is going on. Not to allow yourself to get caught up in all the sturm und drang, but to step back and wonder: what’s really going on here?

 

On the other hand, sometimes appearance IS reality. Religion IS what the arguments are about. Here’s at least two examples of this.

 

One has to do with what it means to have a public religious identity. To what degree is this a matter of sharing specific beliefs? Maybe this Thanksgiving you found yourself with a relative, talking about your Unitarian Universalism, and this is a person for whom being a Christian is all about accepting official church doctrines about God, salvation, Jesus, and so on. For them, without right beliefs, you can’t be a part of a church. This is what they know. So you go ahead and share your Unitarian Universalism, saying that there are no official church doctrines about any of those things. There ARE shared beliefs—for example, that there are many ways to religious truth and not just one, or that human nature has an inherent positivity and value to it—but these are all general, not specific. About specific things, Unitarian Universalism allows you to believe what reason, conscience, and intuition declare as truth. Beyond this, you talk about the spiritual practices and disciplines that unite Unitarian Universalists, such as communal worship; leadership and service; lifespan religious education; good stewardship of time, talent, and money; and commitment to healthy relationships. Disciplines like these. This is what you say: and your relative looks at you like you are a Martian. That’s not religion! Religion, for them, starts and ends with believing the right things.

 

This is a genuine disagreement, a genuine argument. In fact, it might lead you directly into a second disagreement, over what it takes to be religiously sincere. Sincerity, for religious conservatives, is tied to their absolute value paradigm. You are sincere only if you give up your right to choose your social roles, your obligations, your beliefs. You are sincere only if you submit. Thus their rejection of the religiously liberal way, as Doug Muder points out: “[Religious conservatives],” he says, “understand us to be advocating a superficial and nihilistic way of life. They think we want to choose our own moral codes so that we can pick easy ones that rationalize our every whim. They believe that we want the freedom to define our relationships so that we can walk away from anything that looks difficult.” That’s what Doug Muder says. The argument is about sincerity, and whereas we will object that the conservative has misunderstood us completely, they will reply that they understand us better than we understand ourselves. And it goes from there. Back and forth, objection and reply….

 

And there you have it. The variety of religious disagreements in families. Sometimes perfectly straightforward and on the level, and sometimes not. It’s all part and parcel of the family as “dear octopus,” the family as that “strange little band of characters trudging through life.” But now the question is, Where to go from here? How to stand up for ourselves even as we do our best to stay in healthy relationship with the other?

 

I think it begins with the basics. Don’t allow yourself to be treated like a doormat. You have the right to say no to anything when you feel you are not ready, it is unsafe, or it violates your values. You have the right to be treated with dignity and respect. You have the right to be in a non-abusive environment. You have all these rights, and more, and so to stand up for them, you set compassionate limits. You can be compassionate but firm as you say, “I care about you and I know you care about me. But do you remember my last visit, when, at dinnertime, your children openly prayed for the sake of my soul? That made me feel very uncomfortable and unwelcome. I know that the intentions were all good, but I still felt like my spirituality was being disrespected. Can we talk about this? What can we each do to make the next visit more satisfying for both of us?” This is setting compassionate limits. It’s a strategy that comes from Leonard Felder, Ph. D., author of the fantastic book When Difficult Relatives Happen to Good People, and he goes on to say, “Instead of your reacting like a frustrated child, I’ve found with hundreds of counseling clients that when you take charge and offer these ‘compassionate limits’ you will sound and feel like a competent manager and a worthwhile adult. You will be preventing the usual power-struggle with this negative relative and instead turning your conversation with this person into a creative brainstorming session that uncovers positive alternatives.” That’s what Dr. Felder says.

 

“I care about you, and you care about me. How our next time together be more satisfying for both of us?” Such directness, very often, can make all the difference. But what about that extra-grace-required relative whose communication skills are null and void? What if the dysfunctional family dynamics are seemingly set in stone? (This brings to mind the old Yiddish saying that goes, “If you’re waiting for your relatives to change … you should live so long.”) Again, Dr. Felder’s advice is solid: “Don’t set up an unrealistic expectation that the situation is going to be easy. Instead, set for yourself a realistic small goal that will allow you to feel successful. For example, if a ten minute phone call or a two hour visit is the most you can handle with a particularly unpleasant relative, don’t volunteer for a sixty minute phone call or a seven day visit that is bound to turn out badly. Or if your relative has a habit of giving you too much advice, set a new realistic goal for your interactions, such as: ‘I’ll listen to one piece of advice and say, ‘That’s interesting. I’ll consider it,’ without getting into a big debate or war this time.’ When it comes to difficult family members, it’s good enough to just keep your interactions brief and civil, while remembering to say to yourself, ‘I don’t need to change this person’s basic personality—I just need to stay healthy, calm and relaxed no matter what he or she does.’” That’s what Dr. Felder recommends.

 

There is, finally, a third strategy to keep in mind, and this one is especially relevant when the religious disagreement is more on-the-level and less rooted in subterranean factors and forces. It’s this: Figuring out the common thread that binds us all together. Perhaps you and your relative disagree vehemently on the nature of religious identity. For you, the word that sums up the religious life is “commitment;” for them, “commandment.” For you, freedom is at the core; for them, obedience. For you, religion is mostly about right behavior; for them, religion is mostly about right belief. All these differences; but in the midst of them, is there truly no common ground?

 

This is where it becomes critical for religious liberals like ourselves to articulate why freedom and choice are spiritually central to us, and not some cop out. After all, we don’t want to be guilty of bad communication habits ourselves, as in requiring our relatives to read our minds. We need to say who we are. Say, along with Doug Muder, that “We give our members the freedom to doubt and encourage them to question their beliefs not so they will see all beliefs as whimsical and contingent, but quite the opposite: We find that hard-tested and hard-won beliefs are more likely to withstand the challenges of modern life. A marriage whose every assumption and duty has been freely negotiated is not a house of straw, but rather a house whose every brick has been carefully laid. The freedom of liberal religion is an invitation to engage with the most significant issues of human life and society, not an excuse to fall into a shiftless and vacant hedonism.” In other words, what we share with our fundamentalist relatives is exactly this sense of the religious life as rigorous and not easy. We share with them “loyalties that go beyond self and the convenience of the moment. [We share with them a rejection of] the materialism of popular culture. [We both] seek something more substantial than the momentary satisfaction of desire or the endless striving after status” (Muder).

 

All these things represent common ground upon which to build, at the very least, a respectful agreement to disagree. In the end, your relative may never budge, and neither may you, but at least you will sense in each other an overriding seriousness about the quest for meaning and truth in life. And that can represent a start to dialogue that’s mutually civil. A very good start.  

 

**

Our reading today is an excerpt from an article by Unitarian Universalist Doug Muder called “Who’s Afraid of Freedom and Tolerance.”

 

Like most religious liberals, we Unitarian Universalists imagine ourselves to be nice people. It is those in the Christian Right, we believe, who want to force their moral code on everyone else and use public resources to proselytize for their faith. We, on the other hand, believe in tolerance, free choice, and letting people be what they have to be. What’s so scary about that? If the rank-and-file of organizations like Focus on the Family or the Christian Coalition feel threatened by us, we think, it can only be because they have been duped by their unscrupulous leaders.

 

Not necessarily.

 

True, preachers of the Christian Right have said a lot of unfair things about liberals, both religious and political. But conservative Christian fears have not been created ex nihilo. As overstated as those fears may at times become, they have a basis, and we would do well to understand it.

 

Many books have been written recently about the Christian Right. One that does a particularly good job of getting inside the movement’s worldview, particularly that of its working-class members, is Spirit and Flesh: Life Inside a Fundamentalist Baptist Church by James M. Ault Jr…. Ault, like George Lakoff and several other authors, locates the heart of the Christian Right worldview in its overall vision of family life—not just in the positions it takes on a handful of specific “family values” issues like abortion or same-sex marriage.

 

[According to this overall vision of family life,] a child … is born into a network of mutual obligations and depends for its survival on the fulfillment of those obligations. As it grows, the child takes an ever more active role in upholding that network. At no point in the process is the individual in a position to stand outside the network and choose whether or not its obligations apply to him or her. The only choice the individual has is whether to fulfill his/her obligations or to renege on them. This is what fundamentalists mean when they say that moral values are “absolute” rather than “relative.”

 

We may think that we’re being tolerant when we grant that the Christian Right lifestyle is a valid choice. But merely by describing it as a choice, we move the discussion onto our turf. Ault explains: “Liberally minded people often do not realize . . . that rather than respecting fundamentalists’ views, they are denying them by insisting that religious beliefs or ethical standards be seen as personal, private [commitments] we must all tolerate in one another…. “

 

In one sense, fundamentalists have every right to fear and resent religious liberals. […] Every person who defects from the regime of timeless roles and obligations makes life more difficult for those who try to keep it going. From their point of view, freedom is a kind of plague we carry….

 

But (as the Billy Joel song puts it) we didn’t start this fire. The medieval extended family—rooted in a particular place with inherited, inflexible roles—has been slowly coming apart since the advent of modern capitalism…. It is a trying time, and the anger of the Christian Right is understandable. “Whenever an old order dies,” writes the liberal Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong, “anger is always loosed upon the whole society.”

 

Here ends the reading for today…

 

Role Reversal: Becoming My Parent’s Parent

Just listen to some of the themes brought up in the drama from a moment ago. A father who has hired and fired thousands in his time—now growing forgetful, losing his sense of balance, having a hard time maintaining the household. Always planful where business was concerned, but without a plan for his own last years. Mourning the loss of his wife, experiencing diminishment to his sense of self worth. Grieving.

 

And then his adult children. Painfully aware of the early warning signals of their father’s need for help. Shocked that the great man who had always seemed supremely in control and competent is slipping. Losing their role as dependent children, which brings its own kind of pain and grief. Bringing their concerns to their father, and the concerns are not received well—received with denials that anything is the matter, received with a heavy dose of guilt meant to kill the conversation before it goes any further. Don’t go there. As if the children want to—especially as it dredges up old patterns and unhealed childhood wounds. A daughter banished. A son who could never say no. Resentment makes things harder than they already are.

 

It’s one story among many. Some, thankfully, are not nearly so painful. Others, unfortunately, are far worse. But the common ground is the role-reversal that takes place between adult children and their parents, as well as this: the need for mutual understanding: the children understanding what parents are going through in their later years, and parents understanding what’s going on with their children. If you are about to enter into this role reversal in your own life, whether you are the parent or the child, my hope is that this sermon will encourage you and support you in your process. And if this role reversal seems years away, still, it’s never too soon to be thinking about this. In both practical and profound aspects. Someone once said that we see the entire spectrum of the human condition within the four walls we call home, and it’s so true.

 

I’ll begin with this observation: that role-reversal is burdened by layers of complexity. Things are already complex, before any specific role-reversal takes place.

 

One of these layers of complexity has to do with economic trends in the modern West, which have troubled the status of the elderly in our society. Before the rise of the factory in the nineteenth century, the household used to be the center of economic production, in which the elderly were easily integrated, and were guaranteed the opportunity to make valuable contributions. But then the center of production shifted away from the household, often towards massive, bureaucratic organizations, and there, integration is not so easy. Couple this with compulsory retirement at sixty-five or earlier, and the result is a clear loss of social status, together with a loss of income. The retired must reinvent themselves, on their own terms; and reinvention is no automatic thing.  

 

It’s a question of integration. Being seamlessly integrated in the flow of society. And it’s troubled in yet another way for the elderly. Economic conditions of the past two hundred years have morphed the rooted extended family into the mobile nuclear family. Today we take for it granted that you go where the job is. You leave the town you grew up in. You leave Mom and Dad behind, in order to build a career. To keep doing that, you may have to move again and again. But how do your parents fit into this picture? When families were rooted in one spot, everyone under the same roof, or near by—yeah, it might have been crowded, but relationships and care were daily, easy matters. Now, you drive in or fly in to see Mom and Dad during the holidays. That is, if the schedules of both working spouses agree. This is the picture I’m drawing: 21^st century families, mobile, frazzled, overwhelmed. How does regular relationship with and care for parents fit in?

 

This is the larger economic story that burdens any specific, personal story of role-reversal. Larger economic trends which have troubled the status of the elderly in our society, and which have also made things difficult for adult children to maintain relationships with their parents. Some call the pattern here that emerges “ageism”—a kind of systemic prejudice parallel to sexism and racism. The ageism of modern life. Our “throw away” culture in which we discard whatever is old and worship what is new. Ageism is real, and it is rampant. And while this in itself deserves its own sermon, here I will say only this: that we do not find ageism just in modern times. Negative images of the elderly abound throughout Western history. Physical decline portrayed as detestable, as compared to the beauty and freshness of youth. And accompanying the physical decline? Moral decline. Repulsive moral traits attributed to our seniors: “But, methinks, our souls, in old age, are subject to more troublesome maladies and imperfections than in youth.” The speaker is essayist Michel de Montaigne, writing in the sixteenth century. “Besides a foolish and feeble pride, an impertinent prating, forward and insociable humours, superstition, and a ridiculous desire of riches when we have lost the use of them, I find there more envy, injustice, and malice. Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face; and souls are never, or even rarely seen, that in growing old do not smell sour and musty.” That’s what Michel de Montaigne says. How unfair and hateful. Just a sampling of what’s out there. Symptom of the kind of fear that aging creates in people—and where fear abounds, so does projection. People projecting all sorts of stuff on the elderly, because of fear.

 

Which leads to one more factor that complicates and burdens the specific role-reversals we find or will find ourselves engaged in. The challenge of making our peace with aging and death. Being chased by our fears—or turning around and facing them head on. It’s the critical psychological and spiritual task of the second half of life. In middle age, coming into the realization that one is truly mortal—going through the harrowing journey of mid-life that can take a person through disillusionment,  a sense of general discontent and failure, efforts to recapture lost youth, loneliness, feelings of burn-out or breakdown, change in vocation and lifestyle, depression. All of this can be going on in the psyche of the adult whose parent is now in old age, the child who is in truth no longer a child.

 

As for the elderly parent—they are dealing with fear, too, but at a completely different level. For the adult child in mid-life, mortality has become real; but for the parent in old age, the sense of a truly limited lifetime pervades, is experienced directly and powerfully through the loss of old friends, through the loss of a spouse or partner, with declining physical stamina, with declining health, with feelings of inferiority and low self-worth. This is the harrowing journey of old age, and it echoes something that the writer of the Gospel of John in the Christian scriptures said: “I tell you most solemnly, when you were young you put on your own belt and walked where you liked but when you grow old you will stretch out your hands and someone else will put a belt around you and take you where you would rather not go.” It’s all substance to the spirituality of aging: a surrendering, a giving up, and beyond all possible imagining: a receiving. Drawing on unrecognized, as-yet unknown inner resources and strengths to accept the impossible, to do without the indispensable, to bear the intolerable. Creating meaning not through some of the lifespan, but through the whole of the lifespan. Living into our Unitarian Universalist First Principle, especially as it implies that there is an aspect of inherent worth and dignity to people that can’t be actualized and known until our final years—the best saved for last. 

 

But the way there is hard. Both adult children in mid-life and aging parents feel taken to where they would rather not go. Both feel the belt pulling them forward. And the particular irony in all this is as follows: that adult children could be so helpful by surrounding their aging parents with strength and courage to take the journey that is theirs to take! Yet to face their aging parents is only to be painfully reminded of their own mid-life journey, and so their temptation is to withdraw, to stay away. As for aging parents—how helpful they could be, in modeling for their children how to face aging and death with courage and grace! How helpful, for them to lay out an explicit plan for their long-term care that is both physically and financially workable—parents who don’t expect their children to read their minds, who see what is coming and, out of compassion, refuse to put anyone in the position of having to make uninformed, ungrounded decisions. Ultimate acts of parenting—yet this requires facing up to the facts. Giving up denial. Burning through denial. It makes you so vulnerable. It’s so hard.

 

When my daughter learned that I was going to be preaching on this topic, she told me that she would come, ready to take notes. I laughed—and then I went, “oh.”

 

It’s so hard. Layers of complexity to the role-reversal. Layers and layers. The elderly not well integrated into modern life, because of economic developments. Social prejudice. Adult children and parents both engaged in the journey of making peace with aging and death, but in ways that, ironically, can block the other’s progress. All this and more burden any individual instance of role reversal. It’s all there in the background, when adult children begin to see early warning signs of a parent’s decline: like an increased demand for attention, too-frequent fender-benders, or increasing forgetfulness. For my Mom, it was lack of attention to clothes, lack of attention to personal hygiene. This, from a woman who, all her life, had been fanatical about details. The signals can come early and give adult children fair warning, or they can come suddenly, in crisis form, as when a perfectly healthy and independent parent suffers a debilitating stroke. Either way, the role-reversal begins.

 

And so now we turn to the question of choices. Choices to make, as the role-reversal begins.

 

One is simply this: the choice to be informed ahead of time, before a crisis forces action. Don’t wait. Don’t put yourself in that position. Here’s a wonderful book to take a look at: How Did I Become My Parent’s Parent, by Harriet Sarnoff Schiff. The subtitle reads: When your aging relative needs your help; how to act, what to say, when to intervene—while keeping your own life intact. The book lives up to this. It covers in detail all the other choices I am about to lift up, and many others.

 

The next choice: choose to plan ahead. As Harriet Schiff says, “The real problem is the complete lack of preparedness for their new situation which most aging parents have to face. They simply have not thought about the what-ifs. Many of them still feel so young in spirit that preparedness is something for others, not for them. Unfortunately our bodies and our spirit do not remain synchronized as the aging process goes inexorably forward.” That’s what she says. You know, there is this great story about the great Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. He and another judge used to take walks every afternoon. On one of these outings, a beautiful young woman crossed the street in front of them, and Justice Holmes, who was then ninety-two, stopped short and gazed after her in frank admiration, said to his friend, “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be seventy again!” The fact is, many of us are or will be as full of spit and vinegar as Justice Holmes was. But this doesn’t take away the need to plan ahead, just in case. Again, ultimately it’s a matter of compassion. Making decisions about the care of one’s parents is fraught with difficulty. An adult child can for years wonder if they did the right thing, if there was something else that could have been done, or done better. And families have been known to split apart, when plans for taking care of Mom or Dad, coming from different children, compete. 

 

Choose to be informed ahead of time, choose to plan ahead, and choose to talk about it. The father in our drama from earlier pretends that he has no earthly idea what his children are talking about, when they try to broach the delicate subject. How much better it would have been if the father helped that conversation along. Few conversations are as difficult. Harriet Schiff puts it this way: “How do you sit down with people who are dressed for golf or planning a trip and say, ‘Now, we’ve got to look down the road. You may not be tomorrow what you are physically today. Who wants to hear this? Who wants to say this?” And yet it must be heard. It must be said.

 

Conversation is key. Sometimes it’s a matter of children asking their parents what they want, so that interventions avoid being heavy-handed and aren’t more about the emotional needs of the children than the real needs of the parent. Have we even asked Mom what she wants? If she is still capable of maintaining her independence, wouldn’t allowing her that independence be the greatest gift of all? On the other hand, there are times when the conversation needs to take a “tough love” form, where an adult child is feeling overwhelmed by unrealistic demands and a sense of entitlement to unlimited access by the aging parent. Here, a careful negotiation needs to take place. The adult child affirming his or her love for the parent but, at the same time, helping them understand the pressures they face in their own life, all the tasks and responsibilities they are already juggling, and laying down some sustainable ground rules.

 

So many choices. Choosing to be informed, choosing to plan ahead, choosing to talk about things, and so much more. Adult children choosing to recognize and explore their grief in losing their role as dependent child, which is an incredible grief to endure and comes with a sense of sheer unreality. Adult children also choosing to work through old hurts and resentments. As in the drama from earlier: A daughter banished. A son who could never say no. Resentment making things harder than they already are.

 

Choices. One choice I would like to see this congregation make is to continue developing its ministries to our elders and also to those of us whose parents are elderly. To this end, I want to issue this invitation: I’d love to see a support group develop for adult children coping with role-reversal. If you are passionate about this issue and can share your expertise in doing this work, please contact either myself or my colleague, Rev. Keller. For things to happen here at UUCA, we depend on lay leaders—and if you are willing to lead in this effort, let us know. Fact is, adult children dealing with role reversal need to connect with other people, need ideas, need a place to talk things out, need reassurance they are doing the right thing. Your service could change lives.

 

Choices. Each of them sobering. Each of them, in its own small way, echoing the fundamental gesture of the spirituality of aging and death. “I tell you most solemnly, when you were young you put on your own belt and walked where you liked but when you grow old you will stretch out your hands and someone else will put a belt around you and take you where you would rather not go.” Each choice, a small surrender, a small giving up of the fantasy that we will live forever. But this is the paradox of life. “As death-bound creatures we long for life; yet spiritual living in its fullness calls for facing, and eventually embracing, personal death” (Eugene Bianchi). No life without death, and no dwelling richly in life unless and until we can find meaning in death. Beyond each choice, each small surrender, each small giving up of the fantasy: a receiving. Receiving inner strengths we could not know we had until after the losses. Somehow, strength and wisdom to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, bear the intolerable.

The Power of Perspective

Here’s a recent editorial cartoon by J. C. Duffy, about people’s state of mind as the Presidential election winds down. Takes the form of a pie chart. 13% of the pie represents: “Thank God it’s almost over.” 14% represents: “I thought it would never end.” 16%: “If I hear ‘Joe the Plumber’ one more time, I’ll vomit.” 23%: “Hey! Swing States! Swing This!” 22%: “Why is Keith Olbermann yelling at me?” And finally, 12%: “Can I come out of the basement yet?”

 

Things have gotten this ugly, two days before November 4^th. Yet another editorial cartoon—this one by Mick Stevens—portrays a couple behind their living room couch, heads popping up as if it were some kind of bunker during wartime, pictures on the wall all askew, coffee table turned over, lamp broken, puffs of flak and smoke, general chaos and disarray, and the husband says to his wife, “Now, that was an attack ad!”

 

Things have gotten this ugly. So it’s an ideal time to step back and get some perspective. Be like Black Elk from our responsive reading a moment ago—find ourselves standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round beneath us: the whole hoop of the world. A holy vision of hoops within hoops, diversity within unity, and at the center: one mighty flowering tree sheltering all the children, all the Republicans, all the Democrats, children of the same parents, all of us. An amazing perspective, reminding us that whoever the next President turns out to be, the United States remains first and foremost “of the people, by the people, for the people.” The vote we’ve cast already or will cast on Tuesday for our preferred presidential candidate is one of the most important votes we may cast in our lifetimes—and then there is the even more important kind of vote we must cast and keep on casting, which is our vote for each other, our vote of belief in each other, our vote of confidence that, whatever our differences, we can find common ground and we can work together. Perhaps in these last days before the election, we will indulge our partisan emotions somewhat; but after that: we need to come together, and we need to make this country work again. That’s what we need to do.

 

The power of perspective. Our topic this morning. Taking a closer look at ways we might tap into this power, deal more effectively with life’s difficult issues, like presidential elections and much, much more.

 

Beginning with a quote from Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko. ”I will tell you something about stories,” she says. “They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.” This is what she says, and it is in this spirit that we turn to our story from earlier and allow it to lead us forward. An old woman takes her desire to know the difference between heaven and hell to a group of monks, and they first show her a vision of hell, a dining hall filled with abundant food, but people are starving because they insist on trying to feed themselves with spoons that won’t go along with the plan, won’t allow for such self-centeredness. Then the monks take the old woman to heaven—again, a place of abundance, but this time the abundance is fully realized; people feed each other, and for something like this, the spoons DO work. This is the story, and it raises several questions. How is it that people get stuck in hell, when a shift of mind could take them all the way to heaven? As for this “shift of mind”—what’s involved with that? How to make such shifts lasting in our lives, and not just temporary?

 

Questions to consider, beginning with the one about people getting stuck in hell. Religions for thousands of years have tried to articulate the exact causes of this, and now contemporary science complements and enriches their efforts with a theory called “negativity bias.” Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in his book The Happiness Hypothesis, explains. He reminds us that there is far more to the human spirit than the conscious, reasoning part of the mind. There is also the unconscious part, with its own profound intelligence, far more ancient, far more powerful, centered in instinct and emotion and intuition. And this part is biased towards the negative. Evolution has “wired it to find and react to threats, violations, and setbacks.” “It makes sense,” Jonathan Haidt says. “If you were designing the mind of a fish, would you have it respond as strongly to opportunities as to threats? No way. The cost of missing a cue that signals food is low; odds are that there are other fish in the sea, and one mistake won’t lead to starvation. The cost of missing the sign of a nearby predator, however, can be catastrophic. Game over, end of the line for those genes.”  The negativity bias makes sense. And so, we see it playing out in all sorts of ways. One critical or destructive act in a close relationship, requiring at least five good or constructive acts to be balanced out. The pain of losing a certain amount of money being far more than the pleasure of winning the exact same amount. People estimating that it would take twenty-five acts of life-saving heroism for a murderer to redeem himself in the eyes of the world. In America, the formal existence of a Department of War, but not a corresponding Department of Peace. People in our story from today, out for themselves, better safe than sorry. Over and over again, says Jonathan Haidt, psychologists see this negativity bias at play in people’s lives.  

 

And when he talks about this pattern being “wired” in us, he means it literally. Neuroscientists tell us that the human nervous system is comprised of two opposing dynamics: an approach dynamic, and a withdrawal dynamic. One says, “come closer,” and the other says “stay away.” One eases the body with good feelings, and the other orders it to red alert, to fight-or-flight. And the kicker is this: neural pathways that convey threats are far quicker than the ones that convey positive things. Bad news runs faster than good. This is the literal imprint of the negativity bias within us. It goes down THIS deep. Our brains have an in-build red alert system, but, says Jonathan Haidt, “there is no equivalent green alert system to notify you instantly of a delicious meal or a likely mate. Such appraisals can take a second or two,” as compared to the tenth of a second it can take for the brain to size up danger.

 

Negativity bias, written into the very structure of the human body. The predisposition to getting stuck in hell, right here. And there’s more. How negative emotion can overtake and overwhelm the rational mind. Make it an instrument of negativity, transform it into an organ of rationalization. “Thoughts can cause emotions,” says Jonathan Haidt, “but emotions can also cause thoughts, primarily by raising mental filters that bias subsequent information processing. A flash of fear makes you extra vigilant for additional threats; you look at the world through a filter that interprets ambiguous events as possible dangers. A flash of anger toward someone raises a filter through which you see everything the offending person says or does as a further insult or transgression. Feelings of sadness blind you to all pleasures and opportunities.” That’s what Jonathan Haidt says, and once again, politics comes to mind. Some Republicans who think that if Obama is elected, then “the country they grew up in will be no more.” A “liberal tsunami” will rise up and crush “the vision of the Founding Fathers.” Slippery-slope rhetoric, and it is just as panicky with some Democrats, as they try to imagine a McCain presidency. A recent mock editorial by the Manitoba Herald pokes fun at this. “The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The possibility of a McCain/Palin election is prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they’ll soon be required to hunt, pray, and agree with Bill O’Reilly.”

 

It’s negativity bias on overdrive. The rational mind overwhelmed by fear, seeing and interpreting everything through a distorting filter of fear. It’s hell.

 

But even though the tendency to this is inscribed in our brains, this does not mean that we are fundamentally unfree. It does not mean that clean political campaigns will always and forever fail. It does not mean that we are fated to make the hellish scene in the story from earlier come true, where abundance is spread before us, but we are starving because we do not trust one another, we take each other to be some kind of threat, we insist on trying to feed ourselves with those three foot long spoons and won’t give up no matter what.

 

Which takes us to our second question for today: how to shift our minds, from hellishness to heaven. How to make the shift enduring. And I am profoundly intrigued by current research around a phenomenon known as “neuroplasticity.” Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s capacity to morph in response to experience. Reorganizing circuits to compensate for brain injuries. Decreasing activity in one place and increasing in another, in response to mental disciplines. It’s a phenomenon that has long fascinated a religious leader like the Dalai Lama, who, since the 1990s, has been lending monks and lamas to neuroscientists for studies on how meditation actually tames the negativity bias inscribed in our brains.

 

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal describes this: “How Thinking Can Change the Brain,” by Sharon Begley. Eight Buddhist monks who had practiced meditation for at least 10,000 hours and ten volunteers who had had just a crash course in meditation were a part of an experiment conducted by Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “He and his colleagues wired them up like latter-day Medusas, a tangle of wires snaking from their scalps to the electroencephalograph that would record their brain waves.” Each was asked to meditate and focus on compassion and loving kindness toward all beings, and as the volunteers began meditating, one kind of brain wave grew stronger than usual: gamma waves, which correlate to moments of holistic insight, as when you and I are able to put all the various pieces of a thing together and see it in its entirety. The volunteer meditators “showed a slight but significant increase in the gamma signal,” said Richard Davidson; but as for the Buddhist monks, when it was their turn to be tested? The gamma signal began rising, and rising, and rising, off the charts. In fact, even between meditation times, the gamma signals the monks gave off never died down. They stayed permanently strong. Professor Davidson then used MRI imaging to discover differences between the brains of the volunteers and the monks, and what he discovered was that the monks had much greater activation in brain regions called the right insula and caudate, a network that underlies empathy and maternal love. They also had stronger connections from the frontal regions to the emotion regions, which is the pathway by which higher thought can control emotions. In each case, monks with the most hours of meditation showed the most dramatic brain changes. In short: mental training makes it easier for the brain to turn on circuits that underlie compassion and empathy. Meditation on a regular basis can change our brains in an enduring way. Meditation can tame the negativity bias.

 

In fact, just generally, what shapes our brains is what we give out attention to. Not any old idea or fear that floats into our field of awareness, but what we repeatedly choose to focus on, nurture, hold on to, harbor. The Wall Street Journal article illustrates this by citing a 1993 experiment on monkeys. Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, rigged up a device that tapped monkeys’ fingers 100 minutes a day every day. They also placed headphones over the monkeys’ ears, which transmitted certain sounds. Now, some of the monkeys were taught this: to ignore the sounds and pay attention to the tapping on their fingers. Whenever the tapping changed pace, if they told the scientists, they would be rewarded with a sip of juice. As for the other group of monkeys: they were taught the reverse: to ignore their fingers and pay attention to the sounds in their ears. Whenever there was a change in the sound, if they told the scientists, they’d get a sip of juice. Six weeks later, the scientists compared the monkeys’ brains, and the results reflected not the bare reality of what happened, but what the monkeys paid attention to. Usually, when a spot on the skin receives unusual amounts of stimulation, the brain region that processes touch expands. But scientists only found this in the monkeys who actually paid attention to the tapping on their fingers. Again, when our ears receive an unusual amount of stimulation, the brain region that processes hearing expands. But this was found only in the monkeys who paid attention to the sounds. The lesson in all of this? How attention—even though “it seems like one of those ephemeral things that comes and goes in the mind but has no physical presence—can, when focused, alter the layout of the brain as powerfully as a chisel can carve stone.”

 

It’s neuroplasticity. And this is but the scientific correlative to what spiritual traditions have been teaching for thousands of years about the power of perspective, when perspective is understood as a spiritually disciplined way of seeing and being in the world. I’m not talking about spirituality that’s all talk and no action. I’m not talking about fleeting feel-good moments. I’m not talking about retail therapy. What’s going to move us from hell into heaven is, as the tradition of Buddhism puts it, Right Effort. There must be Right Effort. Slow and steady wins the race. Focused attention. You get out of your chosen spiritual path only as much as you put in. It’s not enough to just call ourselves Unitarian Universalists—we have to BE Unitarian Universalism, DO Unitarian Universalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way: “A person will worship something—have no doubt about that. We may think that our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts—but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping, be are becoming.”

 

What is dominating your imagination and your thoughts these days? What are you worshipping and therefore becoming?

 

Stories are all we have to fight off illness and death—and if there is one lesson to be learned from our story for today, it is that the path from hell to heaven revolves around what we choose to do with the crazy three foot long spoons. The spoons that just don’t go along with a me-first approach to life; the spoons that work only when we use them to feed each other. And did you notice how they were there in both hell and heaven? As if to say that they represent a constant in every dimension of our existence, an invariant, inescapable law of life. “The more we share, the more we have.” “The best way to find ourselves is to lose ourselves in the service of others.” “The three things we most crave in life—happiness, freedom, and peace of mind—are always attained by giving them to someone else.” This is the law of life that the three foot long spoons represent. 

 

It’ll be either Obama or McCain, McCain or Obama. The economy will recover sooner, or it’ll recover later. Each possibility will open up a different world. But my question to you is, what are you gonna do with your crazy three foot long spoons? Everything depends on THAT. Every time we fear we do not have enough for ourselves, and runaway thoughts start to take over, IF we can calmly bring ourselves back to the mantra that “for what is most important in life, there is always enough, more than enough for all,” AND THEN lift the spoon to another person’s lips—we create heaven. Every time fear thoughts come in, fear thoughts saying that if I feed the other person first, if I feed something else in my life, there’s not going to be enough for me—IF we regularly practice prayer or meditation and learn how to disattach from such thoughts, THEN we can learn how to stay quiet in our hearts, and clear in our minds. We create heaven. Our brains may possess a negativity bias, but the power of perspective is a power to shape even our brains, turn on the compassion circuits, turn on the empathy circuits. Create heaven. More heaven, more and more. Heaven is not a place in the hereafter—it’s a gift we can give each other, right here, right now.